


oh i'll set me down to lay a lie, to lie a lure

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternia-Focused, Ancestors, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Quadrant Breaking, References to Canon, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 03:10:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: What if - the assassin8ion was a hoax?





	oh i'll set me down to lay a lie, to lie a lure

**Author's Note:**

> _Our orderly contention has dissolved right 8efore my vision 8fold. It was once a handsome 8lack, 8ut now sits like good strong tea sullied and cooled 8y unwelcome dairy._
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> _Thus my heart was 8roken twice. I was fond of the slave. There was surely promise in her red investment. He had her assassin8ed._
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> _\- Marquise Spinneret Mindfang_

Mindfang's shrieking as Ahab's fires almost drowns out the harsh sound of the laser rifle as it shudders in your hands, and a black shape falls backwards from the prow of the _Gam8lignant's Glory_. You track it with your eyes, one heel propped on the railing of your ship and the other square behind you propping you up against the roll of the waves. You're so used to this position, it's second nature by now. Butt of a rifle to your shoulder, a thoughtful squint through the scope giving you your targets in perfect prime position. You know how to accommodate for the motion of the seas under foot, the wind, the movement of your prey. It's not the first time you've shot a troll.

You aren't usually quite this fuckin careful when you do it.

Your former kismesis's screaming is reaching a boiling fever pitch as you shift your rifle to your hip, and you touch your free hand to the corner of your eye then flick it out in a salute specifically designed to drive her right up the proverbial fuckin wall, and her voice scales even higher somehow. To a pitch that you've no doubt would make a woofbeast howl mournfully, the only beast that could still hear it. Somehow it's still coming to you across the wave and you feel the wind catch your cape, billowing it out to what is no doubt, a real fuckin regal silhouette. When you smash a quadrant, you smash it in fucking _style_. True and proper, salt all the way to the bones of the earth.

"Let's go, before she remembers that her ship has cannons and while her caterwaulin' ain't gonna do jackshit, _they just might_ ," you snap out, and swing your rifle the way through to rest against your back before going to tend to the rest of the plan. It's not a great plan. It's a fucking terrible plan. You still don't think you're gonna get away with it, the universe does not have a habit of treating you and your wants and whims and needs kindly. You'd pray, if you thought there was anything there to hear it. You'd think a hopeful thought, but you know hope's worth naught more than a pinch of fairybull shit. And miracles? Well, you ain't sporting any kinda sacred paint, are ya.

The trolls of your shipcrew swing into action like the cogs of a well oiled machine. They'd fucking better, that's all you're glubbing. You ain't the kind of captain to take malfeasance with ease or forgiveness. They've been with you long enough to know that with every inch of their common skin. With a clipped curtness, you give an order here and there, sails opening to catch the wind and you swing 'round the right way to leave Serket floundering in a heave of backswell and you're off like a predatory featherbeast before the swift breeze. Running a proprietary hand along the midship rail, you take a moment to look back. She's still at the prow where she'd watched a blue-clad body fall to the hungry sea, and no doubt still screaming curses on your name and all your lineage as you disappear over the horizon.

You can't hear her anymore. You wonder exactly how many of her crew she's going to take to pieces for this calamity. Well. Maybe she shouldn't have played so well at fucking with your spade, and shouldn't have stolen what you held close so she could flaunt it in your fucking face. Maybe for once she should have really thought something through, instead of just thinking she was so _fucking_ clever. So very fucking _lucky_. There's a sound of distant splintering, and you realise that you're rasping a snarl up from the depths of your guts and you've just dug your claws deep enough into the side of your ship that you've got splinters shoved into your fingers and the palms of your hands.

Well, fuck you again. 

At least you didn't drive a sliver up under a claw into the bed, you suppose.

"Get a _fuckin_ move on! Dawn's not waiting for your scumblooded glutes, you heapin' mess a terrible ingrates!" There's so much sea you want to make before the dawn, miles of it. Lucky that the Great Carbuncle, Her Unholy Emissary, has been so well fed by you the last cycle. She'll keep quiet and sated, long enough for you to retrieve what belongs to you. You hope She will, at least. It's not so long, you breathe out to the horrorterrors and angels. It's not so long. I'll be back at my duty as soon as I've got what's mine. Just let me get my hands on it.

Restlessly, you run your palms back and forth along the rail where you cracked it, and watch the moons. You're more used to telling your time and place by them than any timepiece. You trust the moons more than you'd put some faith in a clicking piece of clockwork. Things go wrong on the sea but the moons and the waves, the sun and the wind - they're as much of a constant as the Emissary's ceaseless hungerings. All the way through your bones, you can feel yourself shuddering with unrest. You're as tight-strung as an archeradicator's bow, and more nervy than a wet behind the ears recruit. What you need to ease you is as far from you as the stars from the sea, for all you're fleeing closer to it with the wind behind you.

Cod and all the smallest tiniest fishes in the vast depths of Alternia's mighty oceans, you're a mess and you're only glad you're so good at pretending that you ain't. Fixing your gaze to the horizon, you take a breath and watch the sails move as though you could make the leagues slip away faster. You can feel the thrum of being hiveward bound in your horns, and it's sweet singing to you. You're gonna have something proper, as long as everything turns out right.

Maybe this time it really will. Even when you think you've excised the hope from you like a surgeoripper cuts out fungus from a troll's insides, it keeps popping right back up. You stare into the ripples of green and pink on the waves, and try to dim the white hot feeling inside you by pure force of will. Maybe the reason you can't force it down this time ain't so much to do with you, as it does with her. You don't think she'll let you down.

It's the night after when you've dropped anchor off a beach that means nothing to no one, and had a sixer of your crew row you to shore. You could have swum it, it would have been easy. But you think who you're waiting for will have had enough of the ocean when she arrives. Too bad she's going to spending even more time on your ship, being hidden away for being a treacherous waste of resources to the Empire and all. 

But she'll be on top of it and not in it. With you. Maybe it'll make a difference. Maybe not. Fiercely, desperately, you want it to make a difference _for_ her. You want her to _want_ to stay.

The first sign of anything is a small V of ripples coming from out to sea and heading in for the shore. Then there's two golden points that resolve themselves into the tips of horns and your crew recoils as a black figure staggers out of the sea into the pounding surf, almost falling for a moment. Cloaked in weed, fangs showing brilliantly white and long as saberpouncebeast's largest overhanging teeth, a glowing monster being hatched from the waves as you stride forward to catch her by the elbows and lift her up. She makes a terrible hissing sound and you flick your fins as her hand meets the side of your face, and yours meets hers. Just standing there for a moment as she uses your body for support, salt water absolutely fuckin ruining one a your favourite pairs of boots as well as your trousers. And you ain't care, a single fucking jot nor tittle.

Where did this shit even come from? She'd been a slave - a slave you'd bought her, a trophy you'd called her. She'd been almost comatose with grief when you'd brought her aboard; you'd caught up on the bilgesludge that the court called gossip while you'd been ashore, o'course. A rebellion. Something like. You'd wanted to shine her up, make her like a gem. Show her off. Look what you got; maybe you ain't caught the eye of the woman you _wanted_ , but all the same. You had something rich and rare in your grasp; jades aren't common outside the Caverns. And what a jade she was. Beautiful. Tragic. A story as rich as the green in her eyes, an aberration beyond all reason. A cavern attendant who left the caverns to be the misshapen freak lusus to a mutant.

You pity her pale beyond all measure, she'd become a reason to leave your sopor of an evening and a reason to leave your barrel-aged soporific in the decanter. She hadn't quite managed to get you to sing again, but it ain't far off. That's what she makes you feel like. You ain't rightly so sure what she sees in you to pity but it wasn't like you'd believed it right away. You're used to lowbloods and slaves thinking they could make a play for your quadrants, use you to make their lives easier. It hadn't been like that.

Madam Porrim Maryam had way too much fucking dignity to stoop to such a coy and underhanded kind of ploy. 

" _What_ took you so long, woman?" you demand to know as your palms separate from cheek, trying to control the excited wiggle of your fins as you tilt your head to look up at her. What are you, some fuckin adolescent in first diamonds? You're a grown man, and you'll have some fucking control over your own extremities, _cod damn it_. Crew's watching and everything - you're just so fucking _happy_ you don't think you've ever felt like this before - She makes a gasping sound like a laugh, like a sob, wavering, shaking her head from side to side and those clever fingers she's got smoothing over your cheek like she can't touch you enough.

Her dress is a disaster. She's covered in weed, and her face is gaunt, fangs overpronounced against her black lips. A seatime daymare, face glowing like the sun. She's one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen come from the sea. You pick some weed off her shoulder and drop it back where it came from, before unclasping the brooch at your throat and swinging the violet cape you're wearing around her shoulders, covering the mockery of seductive rags that Mindfang had made her put on. Wench hadn't an idea of what a treasure she'd had, and had shoved a proper jewel in cheap tat. Serket had a gaudy soul, no understanding of any sort of deeper meaning or what beauty really was. She's a fuckin peasant, in so many ways that ain't got shit to do with her blood colour.

Damn cloak only reaches to midthigh on her, when it's knee length for you. Still, it's better than nothing, at least until you get to your cabin where you've proper clothes for her, a hipbath and a recuperacoon waiting for her.

Your crew is still drawn back in a terrified little huddle, and you hear a few whispers you ain't like the sound of as you turn around. You flare your earfins and bare your fangs, drawing yourself up to your full intimidating height even as you're offering Por your arm to lean on for support as you guide her to shore. If they're gonna be frightened of anyone here, they're gonna be frightened of the right troll - _you_. 

"Vwhat's the matter - ain't you ever seen a woman come up out of the ocean before?" you demand to know, and they all just stand around like the gormless lowblood idiots that they truly are. Shuffling their feet with their thumbs up their 'chutes. As much as Por has tried to change your mind on things, you can't help it if the general populace keeps proving you right to have the views you do. Anyway, she's gotten you to make a few changes - but not too many. You don't want them to think that just because you've got a moirail you're getting soft. "C'mon, pull the boat out - we're heading back to the ship. Move it - before I have your backs stripped raw."

There, that sees them moving and you nod a little with satisfaction as they scamper to do your will. The way they fuckin ought. You ain't got the patience for this kind of malingering shit tonight, nor today neither.

"Don't be so harsh with them, Cronus, it isn't something you see every night - and I must look a _fright_ ," she murmurs against your earfin as she ducks her head, voice low and dark. Already the voice of reason, even in the state she's in. Working to temper you like you don't deserve. You use your grip on her elbow to help her lift herself over the side of the longboat and to one of the benches, while your crew uneasily shift around you both. Oarblades dip and cut the water, and you lift your chin slightly to look ahead to where your ship is waiting for you.

Got a few nights of hunting to make up, you think to yourself distantly, duty tugging at your mind like an undercurrent. 

"Beautiful as always," you lie through your fangs with a straight face, and she makes that choking, gasping laugh again before slowly almost collapsing against you. Putting an arm around her waist, you tug the cape a little more closed and let her just shake a little. She feels chilled, and you chafe her hands between yours, in futile hope of warming her up as her shine casts shadows across your face and the boat. She's a monster, but so are you. She's lost everything - but maybe you can give her something. You've always been an arrogant bastard, and far too sure of yourself. Why shouldn't you be able to fill something of the void in her, when she's done so well at filling some of the void in you? "Dyin' ain't about to put a class act like you down, darlin' and you know it."

It'd been so close - so close - you could have killed her. Or something in the water, scenting jadeblood in the currents and coming swimming for a bite. Mindfang mighta suspected something, instead of throwing a wiggler wobbly because she'd lost her pretty toy, a way to shove it in your face that you couldn't protect what belonged to you. If she actually used the thinkpan she'd been hatched with, she coulda been something more dangerous. As it is, you're gonna send off a nice little packet of details to the legislacerators and wash your fuckin' hands of it. Let the Cruellest Bar chase her down; it's what their job actually is, and you're gonna get back to yours. Let 'em call the clowns into it if they want. You ain't enough of a fool to stick your neck out in those quarters; you'd just see it chopped straight off.

No, you've had enough of Spinneret's games and tricks. Of her and her cod damn luck. You've won the real prize from her for the last time, and looking at Porrim as your crew haul oar to scull you back to your ship, you know it in more than just your bones. You'd scoffed at the idea of a moirail making a hive before but looking at her - watching her as she lifts her chin to survey the ship that had once been the site of her shame with the composure of a queen - suddenly you know just what all those old songs had really meant. It's a good feeling.

Somewhere in the back of your throat, you start to hum one of those old songs you'd long disavowed - and dare yourself to hope.


End file.
